Writing Rehearsal

Poor writers don’t rehearse their writing and the best writers do rehearse what they’re going to write. Ideally, this concept should encourage writers to start or improve on rehearsing their writing, but I find this strikes an opposite reaction in me. After reading the first statement, I feel more challenged to write something well with no rehearsal at all. I’m not sure why I tend to react this way, but I’d be much more willing to accept the idea of rehearsal as a suggestion rather than as a fact, because I don’t like having absolutes placed on myself or my writing. I like to write things that mean something to me, and sometimes they turn out better after I’ve rehearsed them, but sometimes, I feel like rehearsing kills the creative process. I loved Murray’s T.S. Eliot quote that said, “What stimulates me to write a poem is that I have got something inside me that I want to get rid of – it is almost a kind of defecation.” The writing I’ve enjoyed most were pieces that practically wrote themselves because I cared so much about the story; I didn’t rehearse these pieces, they just flowed. On the other hand, whenever I’ve been given a topic to write on which lacked my personal interest, I have gone through outline after outline, trying to get started. Maybe my aversion to rehearsing is due to the connotation my experiences have formed between rehearsing and writer’s block. Anyhow, the chapter actually had many helpful suggestions in finding a source of opinion to write from, such as looking for a surprising topic, connecting or disconnecting ideas, looking for tensions, and trying other points of view. I liked the idea of being disloyal because that’s a point of view I usually avoid taking.